


Of Demons and Dumbassery

by bklynlow77



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Witchcraft, M/M, Reaper Keith (Voltron), Witch Lance (Voltron), i'll be modding tags as i go along adding in characters and such as they're introduced
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-02
Updated: 2019-02-18
Packaged: 2019-10-03 03:54:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 18,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17276609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bklynlow77/pseuds/bklynlow77
Summary: Lance McClain needed all the help he could get if he was going to finally ask out Allura, the head witch of his college's coven. That's why, when he finally got his hands on a real life love spirit summoning spell, he was ready to give it everything he had.What he wasn't expecting was to accidentally summon a servant of Death Herself into his own kitchen.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TayTei](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TayTei/gifts).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whoop whoop another multichapter klance fic lets see if I actually finish this one lol (i have a plot so we should be gucci)  
> Credit to @taytei on tumblr for the ADORABLE au art and idea :D the idea is all theirs and its pure diggity dang gold
> 
> (side note: there won't be any actual allurance in this fic. i know, i know, its canon or whatever montgomary and dos santos want us to think, but its just not really my thing! i wont make allura bitchy tho shes great and can kick my ass whenever she wants. if you want more on this read my analysis on tumblr @toastyzuko)
> 
> Check ending for trigger warnings :D there isn't much too triggering here but ya know i like to be safe

Lance hadn’t been expecting this.

Actually, if he  _ had _ been expecting this, he would have been worried for his own sake. Nobody intentionally summoned a demon during their first ritual spell. Considering he had been in the market for a love spirit, this was just about the furthest thing he wanted.

And it wasn’t his fault, not really. It wasn’t even his spell, for crying out loud. He’d gotten it from Pidge as thanks for completing a few errands, and their scrawl was difficult enough to read in English. He wasn’t even entirely sure what language this was supposed to be. Pidge had been helpful enough to at least use letters he could read and pronounce, but the dialect could have been Hieratic for all he could tell. Maybe those “G”s were supposed to be soft.

The point was, when he had scrawled out his pentacle and lit his candles, he was expecting a pink poof of perfumed smoke and sweet, lyrical words telling him exactly how to woo the high witch in his coven. Yes, he had used different candles, and yes, his offering may have been a little off, but his candles were so close in color he figured it wouldn’t really matter, and Pidge had insisted he use cat’s foot and bat’s wings instead of his usual jelly doughnut from Dunkin’ Donuts. 

Whatever he’d done, he’d done clearly wrong. Instead of looking up at a love demigod, he was staring up at something considerably more frightening. Whoever,  _ whatever _ , it was, it had immediately popped a few light bulbs and extinguished his candles in an almighty  _ whoosh _ , leaving him sitting slack in front of a very dark altar. 

A deep voice boomed across his kitchen floor, and he was suddenly deeply grateful he’d done this when his roommates weren’t home. 

**_“Who dares request audience in the name of the Crone?”_ **

Fuck him running. Lance hadn’t tried to do anything with the Crone. He had been shooting for Freya and fertility, not Morrigan and death.

It wasn’t like he could exactly turn around, all _oh no,_ _I didn’t mean that left. I meant the other left!_ He had made his deathbed, and now he had to lie in it. 

“Uh, hey there,” he squeaked out. “Um, Lance McClain? But I, uh, I didn’t mean to summon, or rather, um, request an audience with the Crone.”

The figure floating above his pentacle was shrouded in a deep black cloak covering any semblance of a face, but he could have sworn he was getting judged. 

**_“...Are you serious?”_ **

“Serious as the plague!” Was that inappropriate to say to what was most likely a portent of death? Shit, he really was in over his head.

**_“You’re doing your ritual during a waning moon.”_ **

Lance huffed, forgetting just where he was for a moment. “Well, I don’t know who you think you are, but I checked it on the way home and I’m pretty sure it’s waxing.”

**_“No, it’s definitely waning.”_ **

Ah, shit, seriously? He could have sworn it was growing bigger. Hadn’t it just been new, like, a week ago? Or maybe that was a few weeks ago. College was seriously messing with his head. 

**_“You’re also using animal bones.”_ **

That he had a valid excuse for. “In my defense, this isn’t my spell. My friend lent it to me after I got them late night French fries. It literally says right here in the instructions to use cat feet and blood and shit, so obviously I’m gonna follow the recipe. Can’t make an omelette without cracking a few eggs, amiright?”

The specter bent down, peering at the green Post-It Lance proudly held aloft. They were still floating a good foot or two above his altar, and he wasn’t about to stop kneeling in front of a reaper.

**_“You do know those refer to plants, right?”_ **

He rocked back on his heels. “What?! It literally says blood right there in modern English! That part isn’t even written in Draconic, or whatever the hell this is supposed to be.”

The specter pinched at where the bridge of a nose might be under their hood.  **_“It means elder sap. Or literally any tree sap. And your ‘cat feet’ are supposed to be ground ivy. Also, that’s written in Galran. Are you not a witch?”_ **

Lance puffed out his chest, trying to look proud under his deep blush. “Half witch! Mortal dad, witchy mom, et cetera et cetera. And I figured I’d go old school and follow it on the nose to make it really work!”

**_“Which is why you used candles more commonly associated with spiritual power and the third eye than the ones the recipe calls for.”_ **

He rolled his eyes. “Okay, you’ve got me there. I ran out of pink candles, and I figured purple is, like, right there on the color spectrum, right? Easy swap.”

**_“Why didn’t you sub in a white candle?”_ **

“Alright, wise guy.” Now he was starting to actually get pissed. “If you wanted to do the spell, by all means, do the spell for me next time. I thought I did okay for my first ritual.”

That was probably crossing a few lines he should have been more wary of, but he didn’t particularly care at this point. If this demonic douche wanted to get all critical, he was gonna get just as critical back.

So he crossed his arms, staring defiantly up at the shrouded reaper. The lack of face made it a little more difficult than he would have liked, but he figured he covered himself okay by looking vaguely in the cowl direction. “Why are you even still here? Aren’t you supposed to, like,  not casually chat with witches? If you’re trying to kill me with all this criticism bullshit instead of the good ol’ fashioned one-two, by all means, keep going. And what kind of fake-ass reaper voice is that supposed to be? You’re not John Cleese a la  _ Meaning of Life _ . Drop the act, jackass.”

That was  _ definitely _ crossing a few lines. More than a few, more likely. 

The purple candles, previously extinguished, suddenly flared to life with a deep blood red hue, the flames larger than they could ever normally be. The apartment was instantly awash in the crimson light, flooding Lance’s eyes and turning his veins to ice. Lurid shadows painted the walls, frenetic and howling.

**_“Foolish mortal, you dare criticize a servant to Lady Hecate upon his own summoning? The price for that is grave, Lance McClain.”_ **

For all his fear, he couldn’t help the little snort. He scrambled back after the slip, pressing up against the wall. “Sorry, sorry, just--’grave’? You’re using a pun before you kill me?”

**_“I--what? No! That wasn’t a pun! Servants of Lady Death do not use puns!”_ **

“Freudian slip, then.” Lance was shaking, though he couldn’t tell if there was a bit of laughter mixed in with the bone-chilling fear. “Are  _ you _ new at this?”

The candlelight died down a bit to a significantly more attainable color.  **_“Of course not. Why would you say such a thing?”_ **

“Dude,” Lance clapped his hands, half in delight, half to get the feeling back in his fingers. “Dude, you totally are! You’re a total newbie, just like me!”

The reaper raised their scythe menacingly, then slumped down closer to the floor.  **_“...It isn’t that obvious, is it?”_ **

At least it was getting easier to breathe now. “No, no, of course not,” he reassured. “When you first got here I was totally certain you were, like, crazy experienced. That entrance was perfect, with all the candles and shit. I mean, I’m pretty sure you broke my oven light.”

**_“Really? You’re not just saying that so I don’t kill you, right?”_ **

“Promise,” he said. “I almost pissed myself when you first appeared. If I hadn’t gone right before I did the ceremony I would have definitely messed my shorts.”

The reaper stood a little straighter, looking as pleased as a faceless death spirit could.  **_“Good. You wouldn’t believe how stressful today has been.”_ **

Lance leaned forward, sitting cross-legged now with the elbows resting on his knees. A day in the life of a grim reaper had to be more interesting than his own. “Tell me about it!”

Pausing, the reaper adapted a more dubious expression.  **_“Are you sure? It’s pretty boring over in the Netherworld when you’re a temp.”_ **

“Wait a minute,” Lance held up a hand. “You aren’t just new, you’re an  _ intern? _ ”

The reaper floated down a bit more, mirroring Lance’s seat while still hovering a good six inches up.  **“** **_Don’t even get me started. If you think interning here is shitty, imagine how it is off the material plane. If I get the wrong coffee for my boss I need to interdimensionally travel back to Starbucks to get the right one.”_ **

Lance tried to imagine the terrifying, cowled form of death waiting in line at a coffee shop behind a soccer mom wearing Uggs, but he just couldn’t picture it. Maybe it was a Starbucks in the Ethereal Plane or something. That probably existed.

**_“Then I get to watch my superior go off on calls all day,”_ ** they continued, plowing straight ahead.  **_“Meanwhile what do I get to do? Organize paperwork. Again. Do you know how much paperwork is involved in dying? More than mortal wills and death certificates, for one. I don’t even get to do the fun thing, like sorting people into Elysium or Hell or Purgatory, or wherever else they might go. I mostly decide whether to keep or recycle spam mail.”_ **

“The immortal unholy Goddess of Death gets spam?” Pictures of politicians and religious fliers popped into his head. Apparently Hecate Herself wasn’t immune to Republican pamphlets. 

The grim ignored him.  **_“And at the end of the day my superior says, ‘you know what, Keith? You’ve done a great job today. I’ll let you go to a summoning.’”_ **

Death’s name was Keith? That was even more underwhelming than Lance thought possible. He thought messengers of the Crone were supposed to have deeply spiritual names, like Apotelesma or Yorak. Keith sounded like a 7-Eleven cashier with braces in his twenties.

Keith clearly wasn’t stopping any time soon.  **_“So I go to the summoning, and what do I get? Some shrimpy little kid with a Baby’s First Grimoire trying to get it on with some love magic. They said you’d be a high level necromancer, not a dime store half witch with a plastic chalice from Costco.”_ **

“Okay, slow your roll there, bucko.” Lance held up his hands again in an attempt to stop Keith’s tyrade. “First of all, this chalice is from Dollar General, not Costco. How cheap do you think I am?”

Keith looked taken aback by the interruption, so Lance barrelled ahead. “Also, I’m not even a necromancer! This is a love spell! So I can get flirting tips!”

Once again he felt spectral eyes boring into him from under the hood.  **_“Lance McClain, this may normally be a love spell, but with the addition of your...liberties, it’s a deeply powerful necromancy spell.”_ **

He had to be kidding. “You have to be kidding. How in the name of hell do you know all of this witch bullshit anyway?”

**_“Please tell me you have an actual teacher outside Witchipedia.”_ **

Lance scratched at the back of his neck, shifting awkwardly. “Of course I do. I have a coven and everything.”

Keith clearly didn’t believe him, or maybe that was just Lance’s paranoia that this guy was still judging him. Either way, he sighed.  **_“Reapers are witches that have been chosen in death to serve the Goddess directly. We did good service during our mortality, so we get to continue past the shade of the Unknown directly into Her path.”_ **

Well, shit. So not only was this guy a terrifying death creature, he also had been a witch. A powerful one, too, if his description was anything to go by.

Aka he was outmatched on  _ numerous _ accounts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading! again, im gonna try hella hard to actually finish this fic. i have the second chapter started already and everything!!  
> comments are always read and loved  
> find me on tumblr @toastyzuko (i post more bnha and spop than vld nowadays but im always a sucker for klance)  
> find the og au on tumblr @taytei (seriously the art is so cute you gots to see it)
> 
> Trigger Warnings:  
> -Witchcraft  
> -Blood mention  
> -Death mention  
> -Mentions of animal parts (no actual animals harmed in fic)
> 
> if you have any others not mentioned please comment or message me so i can get them next time !!


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pidge and Lance clean up in the aftermath of the reaper, and Lance has a troubling dream

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter2chapter2chapter2  
> it doesn't have everything I wanted it to have, but thats bc it kiiiind of got away from me. ill just add those chunks to chapter 3 ;)

“You’re absolutely kidding me, right?”

Lance groaned, scrubbing harder at the scorch mark on the ceiling. Their security deposit was as good as fucked with all the damage he’d caused with the ritual.

Pidge had come home an hour or so after Keith finally left. His wrist had begun to beep suspiciously like a watch alarm under his robe, and he left with a few more grim warnings and a general _don’t do this again, moron_ or two.

Like Lance would royally fuck up this badly twice.

“Pidge, I wish I was.” Damn, that soot really wasn’t going anywhere. “He was a hovering cloud of death and despair, right here in our shitty little kitchen.”

They had looked around at the carnage when they walked in with poorly disguised disbelief, like they couldn’t believe what Lance had done, and immediately set to brewing a pot of cleansing tea. Now they were sitting crossly on the countertop, glaring at Lance over the steaming mug and refusing to help him clean.

“I gave you a basic love spell!”

Maybe he could pass the mark off as a cooking mistake to their landlord. If it wasn’t shaped in the sigil of the Grim, it probably would have been easier. Stupid dramatic reaper.

“Obviously you didn’t, or we wouldn’t have to be cleaning up after a godsdamned demidemon.” Hunk was going to be _pissed_ he had defiled the kitchen. The only kind of magic that usually went on in there was his specialized kitchen witchery. Rituals were specifically supposed to be done in their own rooms. It had been part of their roommate agreement.

Lance had done the ritual in the kitchen because he wanted a little more space for his first time. Not only that, but he hadn’t really wanted to summon a love spirit to his bedroom. For all his bravado and charm that seemed like a little much, even for him. It wasn’t like he was going for a succubus or something, but he had read that even weaker flirtation wisps had a tendency to go a little too far a little too fast.

Ah, the prices he was willing to pay for love.

It was a good thing he had done it in the kitchen anyway. Not only was his bedroom the size of a glorified closet (though surprisingly not the smallest one in the apartment), but the thought of Keith seeing his room made him want to cringe. The guy had seemed cool, for a specter of death or whatever, but he had whaled pretty hard on Lance for doing a few little magic mistakes. The last thing he wanted was for Keith to see all his Ariana posters. Something about being a grim reaper didn’t exactly scream “Thank U, Next” vibes.

At least he’d never see Keith again. Hopefully he wouldn’t see him again soon, at least. And maybe he’d get a different reaper when his own time came. What were the odds of getting the same short straw twice? That dude had embarrassed the crap out of him. He was lucky for more reasons than one that his roommates had been out during the ritual. The fewer people to see his mortifying magical mishaps, the better.

Pidge continued sipping their tea and occasionally throwing Lance more dirty looks. “The next time you want a love spell, don’t go to a green witch with your problems. I can give you an herb sachet, not a ritualistic summoning spell.”

They finished off the mug, throwing their head back to get the last few dregs before putting it down with a satisfied sigh, and pulled out a carton of sage sticks from the fridge. Lance tossed them a lighter from one of the higher shelves before finishing off the ceiling, and Pidge began to smoke cleanse around the room.

First they began by simply waving around the burning sage bundle like a stick of incense, filling the vents with that good weed smell the neighbors would complain about for days afterward. Once the apartment was satisfactorily smoked out, they crushed up the remaining sage with a few other ingredients with a mortar and pestle to begin sigils around the apartment.

Lance knew most of the simple ones by a glance or two. The large protection spell on the door was the easiest, since Pidge and Hunk refreshed that one weekly anyway. The other ones, drawn where the altar had been or where the candles had been placed, took a little more interpretation. Lance was finally coming to terms with the fact that a witch really made their own sigils, aside from the more common ones, and it wasn’t like he had Pidge’s grimoire memorized. He could barely remember half of his own.

They finished off with a general sprinkling of seawater Lance had smuggled back from Varadero last time he’d gone home for winter break, and a breath of fresh air blew through the apartment. It was like they had just deep cleaned the entire place from a layer of dirt Lance hadn’t been consciously aware of.

“So,” they said while cleaning out the mortar, “are you going to bring this up at the next coven meeting or is this just a special secret between us two?”

Lance sat down with a huff on the stool he’d used to reach the ceiling. “It doesn’t really matter if I do or don’t. Anyone with half a functioning nose can smell the reaper on me.”

“You’re not wrong.” Pidge wrinkled their nose, sitting down on the other stool. “You smell like wet dog and mushrooms.”

“Charming.”

They sat in silence together for a moment, basking in the freshly cleansed apartment. Pidge’s magic always had the faint afterscent of clover and honey. Eventually Pidge spoke up again, a little more tentatively than they usually did. “You aren’t planning on trying to get in touch with that guy again...are you?”

Lance stared at them, unsure if they were actually serious. “Yeah, I’m gonna summon a bitchy death spirit back to our apartment so he can tell me how much I suck at magic. I was thinking next Tuesday, if that works for you?”

“Oh, fuck off, Lance.” They stood up, looking pissier than Lance would have expected from his light sarcasm, and stomped off towards their room in the back. “Don’t come crying to me next time this shit happens

Clearly he had overstepped a boundary or two.

Whatever. If Pidge wanted to be unnecessarily pissy, he’d let them. Obviously he wasn’t going to let a reaper back in their godsdamned apartment. He didn’t even think Keith could get in again after Pidge put up all the protective sigils. Besides, they were meeting with the coven tomorrow night anyway. Allura would have advice on how to deal with the reaper.

Of course, telling his high witch about the reaper would mean telling her why he had been summoning anything in the first place, which would mean explaining the massive, embarrassing crush he’d had since, like, freshman year.

Granted it might be worth bringing up just so she could help him make sure he didn’t make a colossal screw up like this again. Allura was like their own personal Hermione Granger, if Hermione had been really into faerie magic instead of...whatever she was into (he saw the second movie once half drunk. Sue him). She was the most talented witch in their crappy little coven without the slightest contest. Even though Lance had met maybe three witches outside his own group, he had a good feeling she’d be the strongest witch he’d ever meet.

And being that buff was _hot_. Call him an old romantic, but Lance always fell head over heels for a woman who could flip him without breaking a nail. If her silver hair and impossible grace hadn’t caught his eye, it would be the unreal amount of power she exuded. It was like she had an electrical current racing through her, flickering the lights and making every hair stand on end when she walked into a room.

When Hunk, his freshman year roommate turned best friend, had offhandedly mentioned she was in one of his clubs, Lance had instantly been on board. He didn’t care if it was robotics or cooking or whatever, he just wanted an excuse to be in the same room as her longer than their occasional passing in the hall outside English 102.

So, yeah, it was a little embarrassing that he’d gotten involved with witchcraft because he wanted to hit on a girl, but a guy had to work with what he had! Besides, he had a little witch on his mom’s side to work with. Hunk had been surprised he’d even known witchcraft was legit, let alone in his blood. It wasn’t exactly public knowledge among mortals.

And now he had to deal with the repercussions of summoning a death spirit into his safe space. Into his _home._ How was a barely-scraping-by witch supposed to deal with that? He’d only been doing this seriously for, like, three years!

It was decided, then. He’d have to tell Allura about it tomorrow, with some bullshit excuse for why he was trying to summon an Eros spirit in the first place. She’d see through it in a heartbeat, he knew, but he might as well try to preserve what little dignity he had left.

At least he wouldn’t have a reaper making bitchy comments about it this time.

 

The night sky was deep and cloudless when Lance finally gave up on wallowing in his own self pity to try and sleep. It was way later than he would have preferred, considering his 8am lab the next morning for a class he was barely passing as it were.

He placed his usual howlite and quartzes around his bed to promote healthy dreaming and rest, as well as snowflake obsidian and black tourmaline for extra protection. Dreams were finicky that way, in that things could get in even when a building was fortified like Fort Knox. He had accidentally opened a conduit to another dimension, one filled with harbingers of death, and he didn’t exactly want one of those dicks to haunt his dreams.

Even with all the extra security he was still nervous when he crawled under his quilts for the night. Before he fell asleep he drew a simple protection sigil in the air, one of Pidge’s favorites, and shoved it away. Let the air currents charge his magic; he was too tired for this shit.

 

All of that considered, it wasn’t really a surprise when Lance’s dream began in an endless pitch black space. There was a good inch of water at his feet, and when he looked down his body was glowing blue.

A prophetic dream, then. He’d only had two or three before in his life, true ones anyway, and they always began the same way. His somnus was always blue, there was always a rippling plane of tepid water, and he was always alone.

 _Well okay then,_ his dream self thought, _let’s see that vision, then._

Water continued to drip somewhere unseen, loud in the emptiness of it all, and Lance began to grow impatient. He’d been waiting for about twenty minutes now with no update on any divination. Not that he was great at divination magic in the first place (it was more his mom’s thing than his own), but usually something happened by now.

He began to tap his foot impatiently, the slapping water echoing off unseen walls, and a voice suddenly sounded behind him: **_“Would you mind not doing that?”_ **

Lance whirled around to see none other than the floating spectral form of the reaper from earlier that night, his arms crossed impatiently.

“What the hell are you doing here?!” His heart was thundering in his chest. Of all the things he had been expecting, Keith was certainly low on the list. Again, he had been pointedly hoping to _never see this guy again_.

As before, Keith’s impression was impossible to gauge under his foreboding hood, but it didn’t really matter. Lance could feel the irritation radiating off the guy. **_“I’m not entirely sure yet myself. I have a few ideas, but I’m not really sure they apply.”_ **

Lance snorted. “Dang, I really got the top of the class, huh.”

Keith threw up his hands in frustration, something that could have been funny if he didn’t emit thick plumes of smoke from his palms. Lance wasn’t sure if that was intentional or not. **_“Look, I already told you I’m not a full reaper yet, okay? I don’t have the entire employee manual memorized.”_ **

“Aren’t you supposed to be a fancy-pants witch?” Lance smirked. “Chosen by the Crone herself?”

 **_“I wouldn’t put it that way, but sure.”_ ** Keith shifted into what may have been a seated position, though Lance couldn’t really tell what with the billowing robe and hovering. **_“You said you’re part of a coven, yes?”_ **

Lance rubbed at the back of his neck awkwardly. “Technically, yeah, if you count a bunch of inexperienced kids swapping sigils and cookie recipes a coven. I mean, my head witch is great, but we aren’t exactly hardcore.”

Keith pinched at where the bridge of a nose might be. **_“Everyone has to start somewhere. If I give you instructions to give to your head witch, do you think she’d be able to do a spell for me?”_ **

Lance squinted over at him. “That doesn’t sound sinister.”

 **_“Great.”_ **Keith continued without acknowledging the sarcasm. He began to rattle off a long, complicated spell that Lance tried desperately to follow and hoped he would remember after waking up.

Though he’d been offended at first that Keith didn’t think he was good enough to pull off the spell, he could quickly see why. There were a lot of easy places to fuck up in this one. Considering how badly he’d screwed with a low-level Eros ritual, Allura would probably be better suited to doing it this time.

**_“Did you get all that?”_ **

It took Lance a moment to realize he was done with the endless instructions and now staring expectantly. “Er, yeah, I think so. Salt and, uh, black candles. Got it.”

Keith dropped his head into his hands with an aggravated groan. **_“I did what I could. Now, get your shit together and wake up. Better get this done sooner than later.”_ **

  


Lance’s eyes snapped open in the physical world once again. Thanks to the lack of windows in his shitty closet bedroom a quick look at his phone told him it was just before dawn He bit back a curse. Of course that jackass would wake him up hours before his alarm was supposed to go off.

If he had even actually been there. For all the signs, it really could have just been another standard dream. The subconscious was tricky like that sometimes. False prophecy wasn’t exactly a new thing.

Either way he was awake now, and so wired he could barely lie still. Going back to sleep was out of the question. He sighed, sitting up fully. Might as well get up for the rest of the day, even if it was five in the morning.

Lance flicked on the lamp next to his bed and barely stifled a yelp when he saw the state of his room. Every crystal he’d placed around his bed was knocked over and covered in a greasy layer of soot. A candle he’d left out had been reduced to a puddle of hardened wax, the wick entirely intact, and the lavender hanging above his pillow was completely withered and crisp. A scorch mark matching the sigil from the kitchen ceiling had been seared above him.

Somehow more troubling than all of this was the note placed neatly next to his lamp. The ink looked fresh and, despite the handwriting being entirely unrecognizable, Lance knew he had written it himself:

 

_Lance McClain,_

_I was worried you wouldn’t be able to remember the spell on your own, so I’ve copied it down below. Sorry for the state of your bedroom. I’m able to control myself better when I’m prepared._

_Signed,_

_Keith Kogane, Reaper #61016_

 

True to his word, a complex looking spell was penned neatly under the rest of the note. It was untitled, meaning Keith had probably come up with it himself on the fly, and yet just looking at it left a bad taste on Lance’s tongue.

Whatever was going on, it was completely out of his wheelhouse. He sent a quick prayer to the Goddess before hurrying off to cleanse his crystals, irritation about the early hour gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> woo! im going to be updating this sporadically bc of who i am as a person and bc i have classes to tend to (and i dm v active dnd campaign) but since i actually have a half plot again i should complete this one :0 (dont bet on it lmao)  
> original au by @taytei (both on tumblr and ao3)  
> bitch at me on tumblr @toastyzuko
> 
> EDIT (1/21/19): I wasn't aware of the origin of the term "smudging" and its racial ties, so I've changed it to the more neutral "smoke cleansing." If I make mistakes like this *please* let me know. 
> 
> Trigger Warnings:  
> -Suggestions of possession  
> -Witchcraft  
> -Ariana Grande


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Allura is pissed but like it's completely justified

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oooooo boise we're getting into some PLOT shit now.  
> also i love love LOVE all the comments i get on this fic!!! the theories are always my favorite bc im always like "shit...why didnt i think of that"  
> also sorry about updating so much later than i did before ;A; class this week was hella busy AND i got sick, so between sleeping, sneezing, and college ive been preoccupied.  
> also shoutout to you guys for reading last chapter with all the typos dear god i felt true pain reading over that grammar  
> ALSO also, see the end for trigger warnings (tho i'll say at the top: there's mention of puke)

The coven meeting started off considerably more tense than it usually did.

True to their word, Pidge hadn’t told Allura anything before the meeting. Unfortunately, that didn’t mean they wouldn’t interfere to the best of their ability. Lance had been treated to a particularly nasty vine spell when he left his room to cleanse his crystals that morning, one that left him hanging by his ankle from the door frame until he gave in and called Allura.

Given that she was a faerie witch, he hadn’t expected the amplification spell. Allura’s voice had boomed across their kitchen as she cursed him out for even requesting such a spell, let alone actually summoning something with it. When he feebly argued that no, he  _ hadn’t _ been shooting for a grim, that only made her angrier.

“Lance,” she had said, “I swear to the Goddess Herself that if this  _ thing _ doesn’t kill you for your misstep, I will.”

With that pleasant note she’d hung up on him.

So, no, the coven meeting wasn’t ideal. It was about the furthest thing from ideal, if Lance was being honest. Allura had glared so harshly at him when he’d walked into her apartment that he genuinely thought she would manifest daggers. He was suddenly acutely aware of the origin of “looks could kill.”

Hunk nervously passed around a scuffed tupperware full of butterscotch cookies in a desperate attempt to break the awkward silence in any way he could. “Come on, guys. There are only five of us. Shiro can’t even make it this week! It would be beyond terrible if this was the rest of our lives in the coven.”

Allura sent another piercing glare Lance’s way. “Careful, or it may only be four of us next week.”

Gods, why was she so pissed about this? It was an accident, not the end of the world. A bad accident, sure, but she was seriously overreacting. He could have blown up his whole building, or summoned a doomsday beast. Nobody even died! 

“Alright, alright,” Coran, their faculty advisor, held up his hands in a placating gesture. He wasn’t magical in the slightest himself but rather Allura’s uncle, and therefore from an extremely magical family. He’d been around witches long enough to safely validate their “club” and give them credits. “Enough is enough. Lance, you said this manifestation gave you a spell to perform?”

He shook his head. “Not me, no. He said Allura should do it.”

“Absolutely not!” Allura looked offended he had even suggested it. “I’m not taking a spell from a portent of death!”

“Well, hold on,” Hunk cut in, muffled around the cookie in his mouth. “You should at least look at it, right? I mean, you don’t have to perform the spell, of course, but you can give it a once over.”

A familiar pink fire sparked in her eyes, but either Hunk had spiked the cookies with a calming spell again or the stars were in Lance’s favor. Allura sighed, rubbing at her temples with a furrowed brow.

“Fine. I’ll look at it. But--” she cut Lance off before he had the chance to cheer--“I get the final say in whether or not the spell is performed. Got it?”

Lance mimed a zipper at his lips, though he was smiling a little too widely to keep from showing a few teeth. It was an unfortunately gummy facial expression, and Allura winced when she took the scrap of paper from him.

She scanned it quickly at first, then seemed to do a double take before going over it again more slowly. Her eyes widened, then narrowed, and she finished reading it over a third time before looking up again at Lance. “You said you got this through automatic writing?”

“Uh,” Lance scratched at his ear. “I mean, he wrote it with my hands, yeah.”

Pidge hissed behind him, “that  _ is _ automatic writing, dumbass,” and he felt his ear grow hot under his fingertips. 

Allura didn’t seem to notice or care. “This does look a bit too advanced for you to come up with, Lance. No offense, of course, but it would have taken effort for me to come up with something like this, let alone a beginner. There are several moving pieces.”

“Thanks for the compliment, Princess,” he grumbled.

Allura ignored the nickname, scanning the paper for a fourth time. “It’s curious. I was expecting some form of necromantic magic considering the source, but this is more of a variation off a binding spell. Not quite binding, but perhaps...reverse binding? No, that isn’t quite it...”

She trailed off, muttering to herself, and Lance blanched. Why the hell did Keith want his high witch to do a binding spell? What, was he trying to get himself permanently attached to Lance? That seemed really slimy, even for a grim reaper he’d only met twice. And what the hell did “reverse binding” mean?

Allura snapped out of her trailing thoughts, shaking her head as if to clear it of any excess information. The pink fire was back in her eyes, though it had a different feel to it this time. “Lance, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think your reaper is onto something.”

“ _ My _ reaper?” Lance said in disgust, recoiling back. “I’ve met him, like, once. He’s a dick. Why the hell is he all of a sudden mine?”

“Never mind that.” Allura waved him off with a flick of her wrist, and Lance felt his voice literally leave him in a puff. “Are you ready to do this spell?”

Lance flapped his lips uselessly in an attempt to respond before giving up and shaking his head. Of course he wasn’t ready to try the spell. He hadn’t expected Allura to actually want to go through with it. What if it got royally fucked up again?

“Nonsense.” She bustled past him into a coat closet, pulling out an elaborate altar. Clearly it was used for her faerie magics more than whatever this spell could be classified under, considering the lurid pinks and purples and bunches of flowery clover. 

She tidied it neatly before pulling out seven black candles and a bundle of thread. She lit the candles quickly and assembled five in a loose circle around him, as though he was standing in the center of an invisible pentacle, and placed the remaining two on the altar. With a practiced hand she scattered dried asphodel blossoms in a circle around the candles, then black salt around that. From a slightly peeling deck of tarot cards she drew the card for The Lovers and handed it over to Lance before knotting the thread loosely around their joined hands.

Satisfied with her work, she looked Lance seriously in the eyes. He was grateful she had taken his voice, sure that if she hadn’t he would be spouting some sort of horror show bullshit. Sure, they were doing some super dangerous spell Lance had received while possessed by a death spirit, but Allura was  _ holding his hands _ . He had to appreciate life for the little things.

“Goddess, Maiden, Mother, Crone,” Allura began to chant. “Hear my prayer upon thine merciful ear. I wrap this string thrice for mine, thrice for thine, thrice more to make nine. Before me resides one soul of a faithful servant bound in holy sacrament under thine name. Speak, O Maiden! Speak, O Mother! Speak, O Crone! Who hast bound his tithe upon this faithful servant?”

Her hands began to glow an ethereal pink, spreading up her arms and into her eyes. Once again she was radiating that impossible power that had stolen Lance’s heart the second he’d seen her.

She continued to chant, no longer in English but in something much older, much more lyrical and curved. Altean, if he had to wager a guess. It was a branch of Fae that she tended to use when she was deep in a spell. He could never tell if she meant to switch over or if it just happened. Either that or she was speaking French. His grasp of languages was seriously terrible.

The candles began to sputter, wax melting in a steady stream between them to form a third circle inside the asphodel petals. The thread holding him to Allura felt impossibly strong considering he could have snapped it between his fingers a second ago, and a small pool of dread began to swim in his stomach. Maybe this spell was too advanced for even Allura. Thank the gods he hadn’t tried it alone.

Suddenly the candles snuffed out all in one go, like seven people covered them simultaneously. The room was unnaturally dark save for Allura’s powerful pink glow, and Lance smelled something familiar. Something he’d smelled only yesterday, like a book of matches set on fire.

Brimstone.

He tried to shout out to Allura on impulse but found his voice still gone. Probably for the best, all things considered. If he’d broken her concentration whatever was happening could kill them both. If it didn’t, she’d kill him herself.

The candles relit a supernatural vermillion, and Lance felt a crippling pain settle itself in his gut. It was like the worst indigestion in the world, like the time he’d gotten super drunk and binged on Taco Bell with Hunk, but somehow even worse. Stabs of pain lanced through his chest, and for a moment he genuinely believed he might be in an  _ Alien _ situation.

Luckily it wasn’t anything like an  _ Alien  _ situation. Unluckily it was definitely an  _ Exorcism _ situation, if the sudden explosion of smoke from his mouth and nose indicated anything. The pain followed the smoke, endlessly pouring from his throat into a coil above their heads, his eyes watering violently. Allura continued her chant undeterred.

Then, as suddenly as it began, it stopped. The last bit of smoke trickled past his lips into the swirl on the ceiling, looking for all the world like an infernal storm cloud. 

Allura finished off her chant with a resounding  _ “Exeunt!” _ before stumbling for a moment, pink light gone. She blinked, like she hadn’t really been conscious for the last few minutes of the ritual, and her dark skin went ashen when she saw the ceiling.

“Fuck, Lance,” she whispered. “What the fuck did we do?”

At least she was taking some of the blame then. Even if Lance had been physically able to speak he wouldn’t. He was currently paralyzed with fear and putting most of his energy into not pissing himself.

The roiling cloud above them swirled ominously for a moment, hanging low and heavy with crackles of purple lightning arcing through every so often. Then it did exactly what Lance did  _ not _ want it to do.

It spit out a rather disgruntled looking death spirit.

The room was silent as a tomb. Hunk was clutching onto Pidge for dear life, as though the tiny witch would protect him from whatever was happening, and Coran was ducked behind one of Allura’s armchairs. The smell of brimstone intensified, and Lance swore he could taste blood on his tongue.

Then Allura snapped out of her own paralyzed fear and slapped Lance as hard as she could on his neck without breaking their binding.

“Ow! What the hell was that for?!”

She raised an eyebrow and looked pointedly at his throat. Ah, that was it. She’d shoved his voice back into him.

**_“Well, fuck me running.”_ **

Oh gods. That was the last thing he wanted to hear. Not that specific wording, of course, but the voice speaking it into existence.

“Keith?!” Lance’s voice cracked, but he couldn’t muster the shame. “What the fuck, man?! Why the fuck did you make me do another fucking ritual spell to get you back to this mortal coil? I thought I said I never wanted to see you again!”

**_“The point of the spell wasn’t to bring me back, dumbass. It was to make sure something very bad wasn’t true.”_ **

Wait, what? “What does ‘something very bad’ mean?”

Allura cleared her throat, finally speaking again. Her voice was a little trembly after the long incantation, but she covered it smoothly. “Lance, that spell was to check for a soul binding.”

The now-familiar pit of dread was back in his stomach, yawning wider than it ever had before. If what she was saying was true, then--

**_“You didn’t just summon me with your spell, wise guy.”_ ** Keith crossed his arms, looking more pissed than he had even when Lance summoned him for the first time.  **_“You bound us together in an eternal soul bond.”_ **

Lance stared up into the endless void of Keith’s cowl for a long moment, feeling the silence stretch endless between them.

And then he was puking Hunk’s cookies up onto Allura’s skirt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading again! you guys are the best for sticking with this fic while i slowly update :) seriously tho, considering i rarely read incomplete fics anymore im always eternally grateful whenever i get notes on an incomplete fic.  
> as always, you can find me on tumblr @toastyzuko blogging about....whatever i find bc im a trash blogger who should make a specific blog for fic writing but definitely does not (mostly bnha and spop rn)  
> Original au by @taytei both here on ao3 and tumblr :)
> 
> Trigger Warnings  
> -Nausea/Vomiting  
> -General Witchcraft  
> -Inability to Speak  
> -Loose References to 80s Movies the Author Hasn't Actually Seen


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's Shiro!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> look, we have a finite amount of chapters now! finally sifted through my notes and put them in actual order, including what the chapters will include. of course, this is assuming i do no filler and actually follow my plan, which is D O U B T F U L  
> as always trigger warnings at the end, but as a quick note there's a brief description of what could be interpreted as an anxiety attack about halfway through. There'll be more description at the ends, including what part specifically to skip if you don't want to read it/what you missed :)

A week passed, and Lance still knew jack about soulbonds.

It wasn’t necessarily like soulbonds were an entirely unheard of thing, all things considered. Sure,  _ he _ hadn’t heard much about them when Keith first brought them up, but he wasn’t exactly the most knowledgeable half-witch in the world. His mother mentioned something about soulbonds every time she talked about herself and his dad but he pointedly ignored her whenever she did. She was so sappy sometimes that even he couldn’t stand it, and he usually loved his dramatic life.

After Allura had untied Lance with more shrieking than he thought strictly necessary and gone about cleaning herself up she had explained the bare minimum to him. Evidently it was older magic than most modern witches paid too close attention to, thought to be entirely fake by some. It was a powerful bond between two souls yearning for fusion, caused when too powerful of a soul was split between two separate humans. The side effects were barely known, considering most of the research was anecdotal and thousands of years old.

The gist of it was this: sometimes the Fates had a fucked up sense of humor.

The only thing Allura did know for certain was that soulbinding wasn’t, like, a thing. A witch couldn’t purposely do a spell and make their soul suddenly half of another’s. People were born with their souls bound to each other or they weren’t--simple as that.

Another thing was that they were incredibly rare. “Once in a thousand moons” rare, which Lance figured meant around eighty years or so. Rare enough that it really wasn’t pertinent information for the everyday witch. 

And yet somehow Lance had fucked up a simple love spell enough to do the impossible.

Pidge had naturally sprung into action immediately at the news. They may have been a green witch by blood, but their passion really lay in technology craft. It was controversial magic in most communities, though considering their dad was an engineer and all, Pidge made due. If anything their connection to nature only seemed to buffen up their techno spells in buckwild ways most people couldn’t figure out. They made terrible computer viruses.

It also helped them with finding out anything about anything. They’d plugged themselves into their laptop right after Allura’s summoning and stayed that way for the week, subsisting entirely on a disgusting potion Hunk lovingly called “food goo” so they wouldn’t have to move. The shit was basically soylent on crack. Lance couldn’t imagine willingly consuming it, let alone sucking it down for three meals in a straw like Pidge. 

While Hunk spent the week perfecting his celery-based monstrosity Allura had gone to research the old fashioned way: her father’s dusty grimoire. The book was older than his  _ bisabuela _ and probably outdated to hell, but she swore by it. Apparently her father was a super powerful and talented witch, the kind that people loved to love and would follow into battle. He was off doing interplanar research of some kind or another and had left his book of shadows behind with Allura for safe keeping. 

Meanwhile Lance had spent the week bitching and moaning to anyone in the coven who would listen long enough. Usually it was Hunk, sweet, patient Hunk, but he wouldn’t  _ not _ complain to the others. Pidge was the easiest, considering they were barely conscious outside the computer for the week, though Lance really could have done without the delayed snark. Seriously, they would respond to his comments about fifteen minutes too late without even realizing they were behind. 

Shiro was also decidedly pleasant to complain to. He had missed the coven meeting due to family issues (though Lance wasn’t sure secret dates with Adam counted as “family issues”) but was quick to pick up on what happened. He was the one who suggested he and Lance go to the gym together to try and sweat off the stress. It wasn’t exactly Lance’s style, but at this point he was desperate for anything to take his mind off what was happening. 

Which was how Lance found himself jogging on a treadmill at the ass-crack of dawn next to a far too jovial Shiro, who was currently making a mortifyingly better mile time than him.

“So, okay, hold on,” Shiro somehow kept his voice completely steady, despite the fact that they’d been jogging for a half hour already. “Pidge gave you a spell, you messed up, bound yourself to this guy, et cetera, et cetera. I’m getting all that right?”

“Bound myself to a reaper, yeah.” Lance could barely gasp out the correction. How the hell did Shiro do this every godsdamned morning?

“That’s what I don’t get,” Shiro replied. “I don’t know too much about soulbinding, but I’m pretty sure if you’re bound to someone they need to be, you know, alive.”

Lance glared over at him. “Great piece of information, wise guy. I’m also pretty sure it’s impossible to bind your soul to someone, period. Why should it matter if the dick is dead at this point? I might as well be binding myself to a raccoon for all the sense this makes.”

Shiro held up his hands defensively. “Don’t go jumping down my throat. I’m a cosmic witch, remember? My specialty is star-crossed lovers.”

“Oh  _ gross _ .” Lance retched, stopping quickly when it became apparent he might actually hurl on the treadmill. Seriously, he had to get off this thing. “Fuck that nonsense. I don’t even know what the douche looks like under his spectral cloak of death.”

He stopped the treadmill then, propping himself up on his knees in a tripod to catch his breath. Gods above was he out of shape. Maybe he should start going to the gym with Shiro in the mornings. No, he wasn’t that much of a masochist. Maybe there was a spell to get him buff.

He limped off to a nearby bench, flopping down with the weariness of the world as he struggled with the top of his water bottle. Hunk had enchanted the water with a revivification spell he usually saved for finals when Lance had told him he was going to the gym. He’d been offended at the time but savored the rush of power flooding back through his legs. Leave it to Hunk to save him after running four measly miles. 

Shiro slowed his own treadmill to a light jog, beginning to cool down after his six miles of horrific athletic prowess. Lance’s bench was close enough for him to continue their conversation without fear of anyone overhearing. Not that anyone would care, of course. It was a gym in Southern California. People talked about weirder things. 

“What I was saying before though is that this guy is a reaper, right?” Shiro glanced over at Lance for verification.

“Ayup.” The water helped cool the fire bristling in his lungs.

“And reapers are dead witches,” Shiro continued.

“Ayup.”

Shiro finally turned the treadmill off altogether, coming over to sit on the bench with Lance. “Lance, I wasn’t kidding when I said it shouldn’t be possible to be soulbound with someone who’s dead. You know what happens to someone when their soulmate dies?”

Lance looked over at him and cocked an eyebrow, too tired and sweaty to actually give him a response.

“Look at it this way,” Shiro leaned back against the wall and sighed, cracking his neck. “Allura explained that it isn’t so much two separate souls so much as one mega powerful soul split in half trying to become one again, right?”

He paused until Lance nodded. “Right. So imagine if half your soul died and went to another plane of existence. That kind of distance is enough to cause the soul irreparable pain. And I don’t mean the basic heartache you get when a girl rejects you for the fifth time. I mean eventual death kind of pain.”

The two sat in silence for a moment. Lance’s mind began whirring through the new information like a car with the brake line cut set loose on the freeway. He began to feel the same nausea as before and quickly stuck his head between his knees, trying desperately not to lose his breakfast. 

As far as he could tell, this meant that he was supposed to be dead, or at least in crazy pain. Almost-dead pain. Wish-he-was-dead pain. Goddess above, it seemed like every time he got a grip on how badly he’d fucked up he only found out how much worse his situation actually was. 

The quiet became too much for him to bear. “Okay, okay, okay.” He was hyperventilating. “Okay, so, okay, so either I’m dead or he isn’t dead. Or I’m almost dead. Or I’ve been dead this whole time without knowing it. Or--”

“Lance,” Shiro cut him off sharply. “Don’t spiral out on me. Obviously you aren’t dead now and you probably won’t die for a while.”

Lance stared hard at the ground between his sneakers, head still firmly situated between his knees. “Well this guy has to be dead! He’s working right under the Crone as a fucking Reaper-in-Training!”

Shiro was quiet long enough for Lance to peek up at him. His brow was furrowed deeply, as though he had just heard a particularly complex math problem and was trying to puzzle it out in his head. 

“Please, Shiro,” Lance’s voice cracked on the first word. “Don’t leave me hanging here.”

“Sorry, sorry,” his eyes unclouded. “It’s just, I’ve never heard of a reaper doing a training program before. I suppose that makes sense, that they don’t all start out experts right upon death, but you think we’d hear a little more about it, right?”

“Who cares if my reaper is a temp?” If that was what was hanging Shiro up then they had more issues to deal with. “He’s just a little inexperienced is all.”

“Wait,” Shiro looked over at him, deadly serious. “Did you say your reaper is a temp?”

Lance looked back cautiously, palms still sweaty. “Uh, yeah? Temp, in training, same thing, right? He’s a junior reaper, I don’t know.”

“Did he specifically say he was a temp?”

“I think so?” Lance was entirely lost.

Shiro stood up suddenly, swiftly walking towards his gym bag. Apparently their workout was done. He began to text rapid fire into his phone, thumbs a blur.

Lance put a tentative hand on Shiro’s shoulder, careful not to startle him out of whatever panic this was. “Dude, you all good?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he answered distractedly, as though he hadn’t really heard Lance all the way. “Just--you realize if he’s a temp then he’s only a temporary employee, right?”

“Uh, yeah,” Lance rolled his eyes. “I’ve worked enough temp agencies to know exactly that. Your point?”

Shiro stared back at him pointedly. “Temporary employee? That means he isn’t a reaper full time, which means…?” He was gesturing with his hands to emphasize his point.

“I don’t know! He’s new!”

Shiro grabbed Lance by the shoulders, looking him dead in the eyes with poorly concealed excitement. “Lance, it means he might not be dead. He might just be  _ temporarily _ dead.”

 

Lance slept restlessly that night, to say the least.

What the hell was “temporarily dead” supposed to even mean? People were either dead or they weren’t. There wasn’t supposed to be a grey area! Even true necromancy, the heavy shit Lance tried and failed to avoid, couldn’t bring a human life back from the dead. Once someone left for dead they were gone. Finite. 

There were obviously stories of witches trying to bring people back to life because  _ of course _ there were. Where there was magic there was a sad witch incapable of coping healthily with death. There was always someone who said they could do it despite all the evidence saying very specifically that they could  _ not _ do it. That someone usually ended up with a gory, gasping husk of flesh begging to be returned beyond the veil and even more emotional baggage than when they started. 

What, was Keith super emo or something? Pulling a “Dead Girl Walking” like Veronica in  _ Heathers _ ? Maybe he was just so involved with necromantic shit that he got picked early by the Crone. It hadn’t happened, as far as Lance knew anyway, but the Goddess loved pulling new things out of her ass. 

Like binding two souls together through a spell, for example.

Lance tried his damnedest to push the clutter out of his brain and try to sleep. He went about his room replacing all the crystals with freshly charged ones, lit lavender incense, and drank one of Hunk’s more suspicious sleep tonics. He even turned on the white noise machine Pidge had built him for Yule, the one that made his room sound like the ocean.

No dice. He kept tossing in his blankets, mind churning out thousands of possibilities of what was going to happen to him. Death? Half death? Temporary death?

_ Enough. _ He sat up abruptly in bed, rustling the new dried lavender bundle hanging above his pillow. Sleep was never going to happen at this rate. It was like trying to take a nap while running a marathon.

So instead he stayed awake and tried to organize his thoughts. Clearly ignoring them wasn’t going to do anything productive, and if he was awake he might as well try to make use out of it. It was either this or study for his history exam. Lance flipped through his own grimoire for a bit, scanning the notes in half hearted hope of finding something to strike inspiration. 

The thing was that he had really been trying to go for aquatic witchcraft like his mom, and it didn’t seem like clean seawater was going to remedy this any time soon. The only necromancy notes he had were the bare minimum on what is was, and technically the Post-it  with Pidge’s half scrawl he’d fucked up so long ago.

Wait.

_ That was it _ .

Lance jumped out of bed and ran to his desk, pulling out one of the bigger chunks of charcoal he had left over from their Midsummer bonfire back in June. It was old, but he hoped some of the magic from the festival lingered behind. 

He drew the largest pentacle his floor could hold before inscribing several sigils around the five points and lighting one of his large purple candles, the kind with three wicks that could sit without a holder. It was from Bath and Bodyworks and smelled strongly of bad cologne but he figured the Goddess couldn’t be too mad at it. It was even called Midnight Magic.

He finished off the scrappy summoning circle with one last sigil in the center of his own creation, one that read  _ Keith _ under all the extra loops and flourishes. It was a bit extra, but he was seriously trying his best here. 

Surveying his work one last time, Lance nodded and lay back down in bed. If this didn’t work, nothing would.

 

Lance blinked his eyes open and quickly looked down. 

_ Success. _ Either he was dreaming or glowing blue on the mortal plane, and considering the amount of issues he was already dealing with he really hoped it was the former. 

Besides that he was back in that endless dripping room where he’d seen Keith the other night. He hadn’t been back here since, taking serious precautions to guard himself before bed and hoping Keith was doing his best over there. His dreams had been blissfully normal and reaper-free.

That meant all he had to do was wait. He sat down cross-legged in the tepid water, straining his ears for when Keith popped in. Not that his somnus could get tired, of course, but he didn’t just want to stand around waiting for Keith. Jeez, how desperate would that look?

**_“No more desperate than calling me by name out of the void.”_ **

“Christ alive!” Lance whipped around, nearly backhanding the reaper. “Don’t do that to me, man!”

Keith’s floating reaper cloak was doubled over in laughter.  **_“Oh man, your face. It’s what you deserve for summoning me on my night off. I was watching_ ** **Monty Python** **_.”_ **

Lance felt his spectral ears flame up with embarrassment, and he wondered for a split second if they were purple. “Reapers get nights off?”

**_“We aren’t slaves, Lance.”_ ** Lance could feel the amusement rippling off his voice before he straightened out and crossed his arms, getting down to brass tacks per usual. **_“What do you want?”_ **

“Love you too, soulmate.” He stood up in an attempt to make eye contact. The best eye contact available, anyway. “Look, I need to ask you something, and it’s kind of personal so I don’t want you to get mad.”

Keith shifted slightly.  **_“I already told you my name. Isn’t that personal enough?”_ **

Lance shook his head. “That’s like swiping right on someone with no bio and one shady ass picture that may or may not even be them.”

**_“Except instead of Tinder this was a cosmic gashapon with thousands of millions of billions of possibilities.”_ **

“...Yeah.” Lance waved him off. “Whatever, can you just be serious here? Seriously serious. I need legitimate information.”

Keith shifted again, and Lance got the distinct feeling he was uncomfortable.  **_“If it will help us break this soulbond then by all means.”_ **

Lance bit the inside of his cheek, hesitating before blurting out: “Are you dead?”

Keith stilled, and for the first time since he’d appeared Lance realized just how fluid the floating reaper was. It wasn’t just that he bobbed slightly like a video game character in idle animation, or that his chest moved when he breathed. It was more that his form rippled and flowed slightly, like a constant breeze rustled his cloak. Not dramatically enough for him to notice while it was happening.

Now that he was entirely static, though.

**_“I believe I told you this before,”_ ** Keith responded carefully after a heavy moment.  **_“Reapers are fallen witches hand picked by the Goddess herself. We do well during our mortality and are deemed worthy to follow in her path.”_ **

“That’s not what I asked.” Lance began to feel something stirring where his stomach was supposed to be, but he couldn’t tell quite what it was yet. Something electric and angry. “I asked if you specifically are dead.”

Keith’s form wavered slightly, and Lance could have sworn that impenetrable wall of black paled.  **_“Would you believe me if I said ‘temporarily dead’?”_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :D  
> lmao who was expecting a soulmate au amiright though it isn't a typical soulmate au so im probably not gonna tag it  
> as always, comments are lovingly read by yours truly. bitch at me on tumblr @toastyzuko OR my writing blog, which will be up and running soon because i need to get my shit together. seriously, im a freelance writer who works for money and all i have is a shitshow main blog. og au by @taytei although i'll be real im taking a few liberties....
> 
> Trigger Warnings:  
> -Reference to puke, nausea  
> -Anxiety attack (to skip: "...eventual death kind of pain." to "Sorry, sorry..." the end is a little more hazy/blends in). The only thing missed here is Lance panicking and mentioning to Shiro that his reaper is only a part time employee  
> -General witchcraft  
> -Athleticism


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finally, some backstory to just what happened to Keith

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is so much later than my usual updates! I've been working more than usual this past week and never really got in a rhythm for this chapter. forreal, all the other ones i bang out in one sitting, but this one took me several attempts to finish. trigger warnings at the end, per usual.

Lance felt his dream turn upside down. If he had any blood in his body, it would be rushing to his head.

“I’m sorry, what did you just say?”

Keith, to his credit, had the good graces to look embarrassed. Or at least, as embarrassed as a disembodied floating robe could look.  **_“It’s a little difficult to explain.”_ **

Lance jabbed a wispy finger in Keith’s direction. Any surprise he had at actually making contact with something was muffled by the growing frustration in his chest. “I think you owe me an explanation, jackass. You haven’t been telling me the truth while I’ve been searching for a way to fix all this!”

Keith looked down sharply at Lance’s hand, seemingly shocked himself at the touch.  **_“You shouldn’t be able to do that.”_ **

Lance snorted, pulling his hand away to cross his arms. “Newsflash, asshole; I shouldn’t be able to do a whole lot of things that are happening right now. I think logic flew out the window when we became late life soulmates.”

Keith ignored him, reaching out instead to grab at his hand. For the first time since he’d accidentally summoned the reaper into his kitchen Lance saw the billowy sleeves pool up, revealing surprisingly normal pale human hands. They were younger than he was expecting considering the gruff voice, and Lance was suddenly very aware that he could have been soulbound to a crusty old man instead. He sent a quick silent thanks to the Goddess for that one.

Keith was also ridiculously cold. Like, painfully, painfully cold. Obviously Lance had been expecting a little chill from a supposedly dead guy, but his hands were like a cadaver’s straight from the freezer. For some reason Lance got the distinct feeling Keith would be the kind of guy to put his cold hands on some unsuspecting victim’s neck. Considering Lance couldn’t usually feel anything as a somnus, this was particularly disconcerting. 

The chill seeped out of Keith’s slim fingers into Lance’s wrist. He turned the arm over like it was some kind of marvel, expression still shrouded by the massive hood. The needlepoint attention would be enough to make a lesser man blush.

Luckily, Lance was incapable of blushing. Instead he let out a nervous titter, letting Keith manhandle his arm. “Whoa there, bone daddy. Hasn’t anyone ever told you to ask before you touch?”

Keith recoiled visibly.  **_“Literally never call me that again.”_ **

Lance laughed a little looser than before. “I’ll cut you a deal: you tell me what it means to be ‘temporarily dead’ and I’ll come up with a better nickname. Fair?”

A tense silence, then Keith sighed.  **_“Fine, but I’ll have to be quick. I can’t imagine you’ll stay sleeping much longer.”_ **

He hadn’t thought of that. How long had he been asleep? It felt like he’d been stuck in this dream for years, alone with Keith in an endless void. Gods above, that really was the nightmare scenario.

Keith shifted back, dropping Lance’s arm unceremoniously and melting back into his shapeless robe.  **_“A little while ago I got involved with this coven called the Blade of Marmora. They talked a lot about doing great things for the world, and it was kind of my dream job. We were pretty much a vigilante band of witches taking down the ones who give us all a bad rep.”_ **

“That sounds like something from a shitty comic book.” Even the name was dumb.

Under the hood Lance could feel the glare shot his way.  **_“Shut up. Getting back to what I was saying, we were obviously involved with some dangerous shit, and I, ah, wasn’t exactly a patient guy.”_ **

Lance widened his eyes sarcastically. “No, you? I wouldn’t have guessed.”

**_“Anyway,”_ ** Keith pressed on,  **_“I was sent in with a small team to investigate something really nasty in my city. It was only supposed to be reconnaissance work, but my partner got caught and seriously injured, and I couldn’t stop myself. After that, it all goes hazy. It was dark for a second, and then I got asked if I wanted to be a reaper. When I said ‘sure’ I overheard someone else say that I wasn’t ‘quite ready’ to be a reaper, and that I’d have to be a temp instead.”_ **

Lance narrowed his eyes. “What, so you just assumed that meant you weren’t dead-dead, only mostly-dead?”

Keith shrugged.  **_“In all my studies I’d never heard of temporary reapers, and when I looked into it I couldn’t find my death paperwork. It didn’t make any sense, so I went to the next logical conclusion.”_ **

Lance huffed a laugh. “Gods, you sound just like this guy from my coven. I told him that you were a temp and he ran straight to ‘not fully dead.’ Wait ‘til I tell Shiro about this.”

Keith whipped his head up.  **_“Tell wh-”_ **

And Lance woke up.

 

At least his room was cleaner this time.

The pentagram had clearly done him favors. Any magical damage was contained neatly inside the circle, and Keith had even restrained himself from rebranding the ceiling. The only annoying thing was that his candle had burned down to the stubs, despite there being no way he’d actually kept it lit that long, and that shit was expensive.

The soot inside the circle could be taken care of later. Now Lance was focused on texting Shiro and Allura all his new information. It had to be a massive breakthrough that Keith wasn’t actually dead.

He busted out of bed and into Pidge’s room, barely bothering to knock. It wasn’t like they’d be asleep or anything. They were still working nonstop on their laptop.

As always he was taken aback by just how tiny Pidge’s room was. This one really had to have been a closet in the original floorplan, pawned off as a bedroom to broke college students. The room barely fit the twin mattress squeezed in it, and Pidge had been forced to put up shelves all along the walls for all their clothes and plants and junk. 

Anyone else would recognize the room as the crime against humanity it was, but Pidge referred to it lovingly as their cave. Honestly, with the lack of windows and close quarters, they weren’t far off. Lance could picture Pidge hibernating in here.

For now however they were wide awake, sitting on top of a tangle of quilts and sheets while typing madly at their keyboard. The screen reflected off their glasses, but Lance was certain he’d see bags on bags under there.

“You’re in my room.” It wasn’t a question. 

“Er, yeah--”

“It’s 6:10 in the morning.” They continued tapping at the keys, not looking up.

Was it really? He hadn’t taken the time to check his clock before running in. He hadn’t even noticed when he’d picked up his phone.

“Pidge.” He sat down at the end of their bed. “Something crazy happened.” 

They cocked an eyebrow, and Lance took that as his cue. He recanted the story Keith had told him as succinctly as he could without missing any of the crazy details. Not that Keith had given him much to go on, of course, but still. Lance wanted to waste as little of their time as he could.

Pidge nodded along, looking utterly unsurprised by any of the new info. Lance felt more like he’d read them his grocery list than told them what could be one of the biggest magical breakthroughs of the century. Millenium, maybe. Witchcraft wasn’t exactly full of daily discoveries.

“So?” Lance asked hopefully.

“So what?” They replied, deadpan.

“So what can you do with this shit?”

They huffed a sigh through their nose. “I’m not sure yet, Lance. I’ve already put out feelers to see if there’s any proof of this happening before, but I honestly don’t see how this relates to the soulbinding. I don’t even know what kind of spell would kill someone hard enough to make them a reaper but not hard enough to finish the job.”

Lance flopped back on the bed, groaning dramatically. 

“Pi-i-i-idge,” he whined, dragging their name out as long as he could, prompting them to throw a pillow in his general direction. “What are the odds we have not one but  _ two _ unprecedented spells, both with the same sorry guy, and none of this adds up to anything? This Keith guy has to be seriously whack.”

Pidge finally stopped typing and let their head drop into their hands. Clearly they were more tired than they were letting on. Lance wondered if they had slept at all in the past week. “Look, I’ll start digging around how I can, but we don’t even know this guy’s last name, let alone where he might be. Physically be, anyway.”

“What, you mean like his corpse?” Lance flipped around to look Pidge in the eyes. “That’s a little macabre, dude, even for you.”

“Not technically a corpse.”

“Still decidedly fucked.” Lance shoved himself off Pidge’s bed, straightening out his sweatpants as he stood up. “Whatever. I already texted Shiro and Allura to see if they’ll have any ideas of what to do. I guess you should just keep doing what you’re doing.”

Pidge snorted. “Thank you for your permission, oh wise and holy master.”

Lance flipped them off and headed back towards his room. It would still be a couple hours until his classes started, but that didn’t mean he shouldn’t get ready for the day. It wasn’t like he was going to get back to sleep, anyway.

An idea cropped into his head, one that his sore muscles were sure to hate. If there was anyone awake at the ass-crack of dawn besides him (and Pidge, of course), it would be the one guy in his friend group who actually worked out on the regular in the morning. 

Before he could regret his decision he texted Shiro again and changed into his workout shorts. Maybe if he did it quick enough his body wouldn’t hate him.

 

As it turned out his body was going to hate him one way or another. 

Shiro was thrilled that Lance wanted to join him for his morning workout and enthusiastically suggested they meet up as quickly as they could. He was already apparently at the gym after his morning run and was more than happy to have a workout partner. 

The concept of a morning run in itself was enough to make Lance feel physically ill. It was bad enough he was actually meeting up with Shiro to do exercise than to suggest doing pre-exercise before his actual exercise.

Ugh. The things athletic people went through.

Shiro was already set up on one of the machines by the time Lance got there. Lance didn’t even bother pretending he knew the names of any of the torture devices set up around here. Whatever it was it seemed to be doing something to Shiro’s arms, something that made Lance’s stomach swoop unnecessarily. 

He was straight, not blind. 

Seriously, though, even a blind man would find Shiro hot. The guy looked like he ate straight protein for breakfast. He could probably bench Lance without batting an eye. That kind of thing made a guy  _ hot, _ even if only in a purely bromantic way. 

“Lance!” Shiro called over to him, snapping him out of his completely platonic staring. “You got here just in time! I was about to start benching and could really use a spotter.”

Speak of the devil. Shiro stood up from the machine, rolling his shoulders before walking over to the bench, and Lance jogged to keep up.

“So, what’d you want to talk about?” Shiro began piling weights onto the bar. “I got your text this morning, but obviously there’s a little more going on here if you’re willing to actually work out two days in a row. Is this a new record?”

His voice was teasing, but Lance could feel himself getting rankled. “Har har. Does it count as working out if I’m spotting you?”

Shiro laughed and lay back, lifting the bar with ease. It was totally unfair how natural he made lifting that much weight look. Lance doubted he even seriously needed a spotter. Damn guy was such a stickler to rules.

Lance launched into the same quick retelling he’d given Pidge earlier, skipping over the things he’d already brought up in his text. Shiro smirked a bit when he got to the part about Keith not being totally dead but restrained himself enough. That was the nice thing about Shiro: he was diplomatic as hell all the time. 

When he got to the part about the curse, Shiro paused mid-rep, frowning. “I haven’t heard of any modern spells capable of doing that. Some of the old texts mention things similar, but medieval witches were so dramatic all the time. You can’t take their word for anything.”

Lance helped him guide the bar back to rest before he sat up, wiping sweat from his forehead. “It definitely sounds like a curse, though. Where’d this guy say he was located? Allura has connections to covens all over the place.”

Lance shrugged. “He didn’t. He name-dropped the dumbest sounding coven I’ve ever heard, but they sound kind of secretive. He literally used the word ‘vigilante’ when describing them.”

Shiro took a contemplative swig from his water bottle. “I haven’t heard of someone naming a coven in years. I know Allura’s dad was apart of one with a name, but it just sounded so silly.”

“Yeah,” Lance snorted. “Who even comes up with something as stupid as ‘the Blade of Marmora’ anyway? It sounds like something from a B-list anime movie.”

Shiro coughed violently. Struggling for air, he looked up at Lance, suddenly gravely serious. “Did you just say the Blade of Marmora?”

“Uh, yeah.” Lance rubbed at the back of his neck. “Don’t exactly forget a dippy name like that all the time.”

“Oh, gods,” Shiro stood up sharply, heading swiftly for his gym bag. “Gods, Lance, I think I might know who your reaper is.”

For the second time that day Lance felt the blood rush to his head. “Excuse me? How the hell would you know that?”

Shiro was texting madly, and Lance had a feeling he knew who was at the other end. Allura probably wouldn’t appreciate the barrage of texts before 8AM. “Lance, not only do I know the Blade, but I know a guy named Keith who joined them.”

“Slow your fucking roll, my man.” Lance snapped his fingers in front of Shiro’s nose to break him out of the texting stream. Was this just what happened every time Shiro went to the gym? Maybe if he started working out regularly he’d get revelations.

“Lance,” Shiro looked up from his phone, a look of worry deeper in his eyes than Lance thought possible. “I know about the Blade because they helped me out of a bind a few years ago, but I also know them because the last witch I trained joined their ranks.”

The room was spinning madly, and once again Lance had the distinct feeling he was going to be sick. “Let me guess. This guy’s name was Keith?”

“Keith Kogane,” the worry became tinged with sadness. “My brother.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lmao who wasnt expecting that  
> i live for the broganes so i try to work them into my fics as much as i can. now of course theres a little ~angst~ to explain why shiro and keith arent in current contact/why shiro wouldnt immediately know that his brother is quasi dead. it all ties in, i swear 👀  
> you know my tumblr at this point. no, i havent made a writing blog yet. again, this week was too hectic.  
> you also know who the original au is from but of course i'll credit the lovely @taytei 
> 
> Trigger Warnings:  
> -General Witchcraft (yall know this by now though...right?)  
> -Mentions of Death  
> -Indulgent references to the Princess Bride (shoutout to the commenter on the last chapter, you know who you are)


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's Keith, but, like, actual Keith!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ho ho holy fuck this is late.  
> i am DEEPLY sorry for how late this is. college hit me like a truck and, shockingly, taking two writing courses in one semester makes you really not want to write in your free time, like, ever. whenever i tried to actually write this it turned out fucking awful.  
> i was gonna save some of this shit for next chapter, but tbh im mad guilty about not updating last week so here it is :D  
> see the end notes for triggers, per usual

Lance couldn’t help himself. He started to laugh.

Shiro looked mildly scandalized, which, fair. But seriously, how could he not? What kind of B-list movie bullshit was this supposed to be?

“I’m sorry,” he wiped a loose tear from his cheek. “Really, I shouldn’t laugh, but dude. Dude. Do you live in the  _ Star Wars _ universe?”

Shiro pinked around the ears. “Excuse me?”

Lance held up a hand. “I’ve known you for, like, two years? Maybe three? How the hell did you keep a  _ brother _ secret from me?”

He sighed and sat down on a gym bench, suddenly looking about fifteen years older. “We fell out of touch when he joined the Blade. I haven’t seen or spoken to him in almost five years. It killed me to know he was out there and I couldn’t see him, but I understood why. The Blade is incredibly secretive to protect those close to the member, and who’s closer than his adoptive brother?”

“But still, this reaper I tied myself to is named Keith and you never thought  _ hm, maybe _ ?”

Shiro was growing steadily redder. “I thought it was a coincidence!”

“You thought it was a coincidence that your estranged little brother and the reaper who is soulbound to me share the same gods damned name?!”

“Keith is a common name!”

Lance felt a vein burst in his forehead. “It’s not  _ that _ common! Name another Keith you fucking know!”

Shiro sat quietly for a moment before dropping his head in his hands. “Fine. But you have his full name, and you know the vague area he lives in, so Pidge can almost definitely track him down now. I’ve seen them find people with less.

He was right, of course. All Pidge needed before was a location, and now they had that and more. It was going to be the world’s easiest  _ Where’s Waldo _ . 

  
  


The best part was that Shiro really was correct. Pidge tracked him down in less that twenty minutes once Lance got the info to them, before promptly returning to their curse research.

Keith was barely a twenty minute walk from campus, ironically enough. Lance didn’t even need to take a bus or anything. 

The towering walls of the hospital always made him vaguely uneasy. He was majoring in marine biology for a reason. Fish guts? Easy peasy. Human guts?  _ Ugh. _ It was shitty enough that he had to pass this hellhole every time he wanted to go to his favorite ramen place. Actually going into it was going to be horrific.

He took a deep breath to steel himself. This wasn’t just for him, after all. Keith needed him, too. He’d do pretty much anything at this point to fix his monumental fuck up.

If there was anything worse than the hospital aesthetics, it was the smell. The second he walked in it was like he had been bitch-slapped in the nose with a latex glove, the kind covered with nasty powder. The heaviness of all the antiseptic didn’t exactly help much, either. 

And, gods above, hospitals were depressing as shit. Lance knew that going in, obviously, but it was so much worse actually in person. Everyone in the waiting room either looked like they were on their last legs or were prepping to mourn someone else who was. He counted at least three ancient grannies right when he walked in, all hooked up to monstrous oxygen tanks.

An exhausted looking aide looked him up and down warily when he walked up to the desk. “How can I help you today, sir?”

Lance put on his most winsome smile. If anyone needed a little sunshine in this dank cesspit, it was the poor nurse. She probably got the worst end of literally every stick. “I’m here to visit a friend. Keith Kogane? Up in, uh, long term care?”

She raised an unimpressed eyebrow. “Mr. Kogane doesn’t have any visitors on his list. How do you know the patient?”

Lance paused. He wasn’t entirely sure how to explain to a mortal woman that he’d accidentally messed up potentially black magic and intertwined his threads of fate with another’s. 

Instead he leaned a little bit onto the desk, flashing another smile. It was a bit tighter this time, but he hoped she was too tired to notice. “Look,” he glanced down quickly at her nametag, “Romelle. I promise I’m just a friend of his from school. It’s been a hot second since I’ve seen him, and I miss the guy. I know he won’t be a great conversationalist, but between you me, he isn’t that chatty when he’s awake, either.”

Romelle sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Can I see some form of ID?”

With a quick internal cheer Lance slid over his student ID across the desk. The nurse examined it tiredly before tapping a few things into a derelict computer. “Alright, Mr. McClain, you’re on his list now. Visiting hours end at five today. Enjoy your time.”

She gave him a slip with the room number scribbled on as well as a visitor’s sticker, and he booked it for the elevator. No need to stick around in the waiting room with a bunch of sick old people. Hopefully the other floors would be a little less overbearingly upsetting. 

Keith, as it turned out, was not in “long term care,” but rather in the ICU up on the tenth floor. It was easy enough to figure his way around once he actually got up there, even if the whole place did reek of death. Maybe the ability to sense death was a side effect of performing necromancy. Even more of a reason he did  _ not _ want to be a necromancer. Only water magic for him, please.

Still, the entire tenth floor felt like it had a hazy curtain hanging over it. Not the sickly yellow vibe of the bottom few floors, but more of a mournful black. For some reason the elevator had spit him out in the 1030s, meaning Room #1013 was a considerable walk away. Every room he passed had a patient barely clinging to life inside, each with varying thickness to that horrible smog. Lance had the distinct temptation to hold his breath like he was passing a graveyard.

Even without the slip of paper clenched in his sweaty hand Lance would’ve been able to find Keith’s room. There was a deep tug at his sternum, like someone had embedded a meathook right below his ribs and was pulling, hard. The longer he walked down the hall the stronger the pull got until he was half certain his legs weren’t actually doing the moving anymore. He may as well have been wheeled over on a gurney for all the effort he was putting in. 

It only got worse when he turned the corner. There it was at the end of the hall, a thick cloud of death pooling through the cracks in the door. It was so heavy Lance could barely believe the mortals couldn’t see it.

The urge to hold his breath was stronger than ever. Lance felt as though he might choke soon if he didn’t, though exactly what he was choking on would be hard to explain to a doctor.

He reached out shakily for the door handle to Room #1013, struggling against the tide of roiling death. Now that he was this close he could see crackles of angry red and purple lightning arcing through the aura, threatening to strike him down where he stood.

Literally no part of him wanted to go in there. Every hair on his body was screaming at him to  _ get out of there _ , to go back to the elevator, back to campus, and hide under his mattress. Fuck witchcraft. He’d rather go cold turkey and join the Catholic church than go in that room.

_ Still _ , a small part of him insisted,  _ it wasn’t just for him _ . Being selfish would fuck over a whole lot more people than just him this time. Namely, being selfish would fuck over Keith this time, and Lance wasn’t heartless enough to do that to a guy he’d gotten into this mess in the first place. 

So he shoved through the cloud of death into the room. He was sure anyone who may have seen him probably thought he was crazy, and maybe he  _ was _ crazy, but he didn’t really give a shit right now. Right now all he cared about was making it into that room in one piece.

Lance had been so focused on getting into the room, in fact, that he hadn’t taken a moment to think about just what he’d find in there. Obviously he was expecting Keith, and a few machines wouldn’t have really been much of a shocker either.

What he  _ wasn’t _ prepared for was the fact that Keith obviously wasn’t going to be wearing his reaper robe. 

Really, it should have occurred to him earlier. The thing was, Lance had grown so used to the black cowl of death that he hadn’t even considered what was underneath. Sure, he’d seen Keith’s hands that one time, but that was about it. 

The Keith in the room was the last thing he expected. Instead of a terrifying and buff spectre of death there lay a frail boy in hospital bed, hooked up to more tubes than Lance wanted to count. The kid must have been half his size, easy. His waxy skin was stretched thin over sharp little bird bones sticking out at horrible angles, and, gods above, was that a  _ mullet _ tied up in a bun?! Lance hoped desperately that a nurse had given him that shitty haircut and that his literal soulmate wasn’t stuck hopelessly in the eighties. 

Lance knew for a fact that Keith was around his age, thanks to Pidge’s creepy hacking ability and Shiro’s familial tie, but he couldn’t help thinking the guy looked a weird mix of ten years older and younger. He was so shrunken and delicate on the bed that he looked about six years old, and yet his gaunt features gave him the face of a dying man. 

Under it all though there was something achingly familiar about him. It wasn’t like he looked like Shiro or anything, what with being adoptive brothers, but Lance felt like he’d known him all his life. Of course Keith looked like that. Keith couldn’t look like anyone else.

He didn’t even bother checking the chart to see if this was really Keith. The painfully bitter swell in his chest assured him that, yes, the guy he was soulbound to was definitely lying “temporarily dead” in a hospital bed in front of him. 

Lance was suddenly deeply grateful there weren’t any staff members in the room. Otherwise him bursting into definitely unwarranted tears and totally not sinking to his knees next to the cot would have been, like,  _ way _ more embarrassing. It was bad enough breaking down in front of a virtual stranger. At least this guy wasn’t conscious to see it go down. 

He stayed like that for a hot minute, trying to get a grip on what little fragile masculinity he had left.  _ Why _ he was reacting like this was totally beyond him. It wasn’t like he didn’t know Keith was like this going in. Hell, until a little while ago he’d expected to find Keith six feet under before seeing him on the mortal coil. 

Something about actually being in the same room as him while still being so painfully distant was almost too much for him. It was like he’d been half blind all his life without realizing, and now he had been given a glimpse of what it might be to see clearly before it was snatched away again, or like he’d been wearing a brace around his ribs that was finally loosened just enough to let him take one full breath before tightening back up again. 

Lance had always hated the term “other half,” and now he knew exactly  _ why _ he’d hated it. Keith wasn’t his other half, or whatever. Lance could exist totally fine without him, be whole all by himself.

Being around Keith just made that shit  _ better _ . He was like applying a really good Instagram filter--not necessary for the full picture experience yet a total enhancement. He didn’t need the world to smell like buttered popcorn and roses all the time, but damn if he wasn’t going to enjoy it.

Lance shook his head, clearing out as much of the chaos as he could. There was still that acrid black smoke pouring off of Keith’s body, thick with lightning and the choke of the void. He had to get everything he needed to do done before he got seriously ill. Who knew what prolonged exposure to this stuff would do to him. 

He dragged over a chair from the corner of the room to the side of Keith’s bed before placing little electric votive candles around the bed. Real fire would have been more powerful, of course, but Lance couldn’t imagine the hospital would be too thrilled if he started lighting candles next to a coma patient. A makeshift altar would be better than nothing. Besides, he’d even shelled out for purple craft paint to make the candles more aesthetically pleasing.

Sending a quick prayer up to the Goddess, Lance dropped into the chair, ready for the next step. He gingerly took Keith’s hands in his own, careful to avoid jostling any of the wires and tubes too much, and almost instantly recoiled from the clamminess. It was like holding hands with a dead fish, only half as pleasant. Once again Lance found himself hoping his soulmate wasn’t like this when he was conscious. Granted, once he was conscious the soulbond would hopefully be broken and he wouldn’t even have to worry about this guy anymore, but still.

The thought of breaking the soulbond sent an unexpected pang through Lance’s chest. Up until now he’d been totally gung ho about tearing this thing to shreds, but now he wasn’t so sure. The irrational part of him really wanted to hold onto this as long as he could. 

Luckily there was a sliver of rationality still lodged in his brain, and he forced it to take control of the show. Back to the task at hand. He focused his energy into his hands, reaching out awkwardly to see if he could find something, anything of Keith’s own energy.

Faint as it was, Lance could feel a glimmer of fire somewhere deep beneath the violent waves of necrose. He fought as hard as he could towards it, wrestling with the current. As he did he felt his body slip out of consciousness and into his much more spiritually powerful somnus. 

He had grown relatively used to his glowing dream self over the past week. He’d literally just had a seer dream last night, after all. Usually his body had a faint light to it, and when he looked down at himself he looked kind of like a lava lamp, all marbled blues swirling slowly around.

This time was different though. Radically different. For one, he could see his glow extending way, way past his own body. It sliced through the clouds like a canoe paddle in a river, shooting him forward towards that distant glittering flame. 

For another, he almost lost concentration when he saw his arms cutting through the fog in front of him. Rather than shifting through viscous shades of blue gel his body looked alive, fast paced and churning. He watched as waves crashed where his veins had once been, trails of salted foam taking the place of his freckles. Every step he took was accentuated with the deep thrum of the sea, ancient elemental power licking at his heels.

He was ocean incarnate, and he  _ fucking loved it. _

With his newfound power slicing through the veil was easier than he could have ever expected. It was, by no means, an effortless action, but he knew he would have never been able to do this before.

He wasn’t sure what he’d find behind the veil, and yet there he was, sitting cross legged like he’d been waiting patiently for Lance all along.

“Keith,” he breathed, suddenly unsure of himself.

Keith sat in front of Lance like he’d never seen him before. Gone was the bony shrimp lying in the hospital bed. Gone was the terrifying floating cowl of the Crone, harbinger of the end.

In his place was a brilliantly red and orange figure, glowing faintly and thrumming with energy. Lance knew in an instant that this was his somnus, and his weakened one at that. Something told him a fully live Keith would have a somnus unlike anything he could ever fathom, a living pyre of pure flame. Even like this Lance could feel himself beginning to dry out in the intense presence of such power. 

Keith didn’t have a face, not exactly, and yet Lance could have sworn he was smiling. All the time he’d spent unable to see Keith’s actual facial expressions made Lance kind of an expert on his subtle body language. Now that the billowing cloak was gone it was like playing a game on easy mode.

“Lance,” and gods above, his voice was something else without that shitty reaper augmentation. If Lance had lungs, he would’ve had the wind knocked clean out of him. “Lance, you finally found me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we're in the end game now, folks.  
> i'm still expecting ~8 chapters for this, but we will see.   
> come chat me up on tumblr @toastyzuko (no i dont have a writing blog yet. shut up)  
> original au as always by the ever lovely @taytei
> 
> Trigger Warnings:  
> -General Witchcraft  
> -Hospital Scenes  
> -Death Mentions  
> -That Soft Gay Shit


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More Keith, more Lance, more one-off background characters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So do I even have a schedule for posting? arguably not. i totally should have posted this last thursday for valentines day but i definitely just wrote it today on a whim (mostly bc i forgot the holiday and suddenly found a college-free day on my hands).  
> Check the end for triggers per usual

Before he could think clearly enough to stop himself, Lance was tackling Keith in a bone-crushing hug.

It was Keith.  _ His _ Keith, semi alive and in the quasi flesh. He was painfully, wonderfully real and solid under Lance’s grip, burning hot and curled through with the scent of a smokeless fire. Lance revelled in the fact that he could feel Keith in his arms, even in his somnus form. He never wanted to let go. 

A moment later though his brain reconnected with his self control, and he scrambled back.

“Ah, fuck,” he put as much distance as was comfortable between the two of them and averted his gaze. “Sorry, man. I, um, I’m kind of a touchy-feely person is all. I get it if you aren’t, though. You should see how Pidge reacts when I hug them. They get all pissy like a wet cat and--”

Keith cut him off with a snort, and when Lance looked back up he saw him covering his not-face with a hand. “It’s fine. Just, uh, ask, if we ever meet in corporeal person. You don’t have to stand fifteen feet away.”

Gods above, his voice. As embarrassing as it was, Lance wasn’t even, like, turned on by his voice. It just made him feel warm and happy and shit. He drifted cautiously closer, skin heating the nearer he got. Keith was burning like a furnace.

“So...now what?”

Keith looked at him sideways. “What do you mean?”

Lance shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. Now that I found you I thought the answer was just going to, like, come to me in this crazy eureka moment. I’d pull a knight-in-shining-armor, wake up the sleeping princess, ride off into the sunset, the whole shebang. Except now I’m here with you and I don’t have any clue what this fucking curse could be, let alone how we got fucking soulbound to each other, because, oh yeah, don’t forget that we’re apparently bound in eternal love to each other, which means if you die then I die, and it’s not like I want you to die but I really don’t want  _ me _ to die, y’know?”

He sat down in a huff and listened to the distant dripping of the somnus space. The shitty thing was that he’d seriously deluded himself enough to think that was all it’d take. As if he was some high power witch or whatever.

A loud smack cut him out of his thoughts, and he looked up to see Keith askew on the ground.

“Don’t say a word.”

Oh gods. “Did you forget you couldn’t float?”

“Shut up.” There wasn’t any venom in his words, not really. He was trying, for sure, but Keith was about as intimidating as a baby snake. Scary in theory, hella tiny in person.

Lance choked back his laugh as he stuck out a hand to help him sit up. That was the most humanizing thing he’d seen from the guy yet. Nothing like a dumbass accident to soften a terrifying demi deity. At least he knew Keith couldn’t feel physical pain in this form.

“Anyway,” Keith shifted himself like a disgruntled cat. “The point wasn’t to figure out the spell when you found me, the point was to find my body in general so when you eventually  figure out the revivification you can actually perform it. Where am I?”

“Oh!” Obviously. How could he have forgotten? “You’re here in San Diego at the General Hospital. Dude, you were  _ impossible _ to track down. Why didn’t you give me more info?”

“Force of habit,” Keith replied, and Lance thought he could hear a hint of embarrassment on his voice. “Second point: how do you know Takashi Shirogane?”

That one took a longer beat for him to answer. “You mean Shiro? He’s in my college coven. Is that his full name?”

Keith ignored his question. “My brother just happens to be in your coven?”

Lance held up his hands defensively. “Don’t give me that. You think I wasn’t surprised to hear that too? I didn’t even know Shiro had a brother!”

He slumped at that, and Lance immediately felt a shot of guilt go right to his gut. “We aren’t as close as we used to be. Again, force of habit.”

“He mentioned your renegade band of ne’er-do-wells were pretty secretive,” he said, trying to lighten the mood.

Wait a minute. 

“That isn’t my fau--”

Lance cut him off with a hand, thinking hard. Maybe that was it! Keith hadn’t been alone when he’d been taken down in action, so to speak. He’d had his posse with him, which meant there had been witnesses, which meant there was someone who knew just what had gone down. Assuming they hadn’t been taken out after him, there was a whole group of people who knew what had happened.

After all, how else would Keith have ended up in a hospital? His attacker would’ve probably just left him for dead wherever they fought, not dragged his ass to get mortally healed. Even if the witnesses  _ had _ been taken out, there were totally other people who knew what happened. Groups like that usually had reconnaissance, right?

Maybe that was  _ CSI _ . 

Still, the Blade seemed like the types of guys to do that shit. Hell, Keith’s half-dead body was probably bugged to hell and back.

“Keith,” Lance realized he hadn’t spoken for a hot minute and probably looked crazy. “Was there anyone else with you when you went down?”

Keith sat chillingly still for a moment. “Why?”

“Don’t you think they could help us out? Tell us what happened in there?” 

Keith shook his head. “The Blade is too secretive. I can’t give out names of other members. It’s already bad that you know who I am.”

Lance surged forward to grip Keith’s hands in his own. “Keith, this is kind of a life or death thing, yeah? I don’t need life stories, just a couple names or addresses.”

He could practically hear the cogs turning in Keith’s head as he sat there silently, deliberating. 

“Fine.” His words were clipped short. “Krolia Kogane. But don’t contact her through any mortal means, and make sure to get everything you need the first time. She won’t talk to you more than once.”

Lance raised an eyebrow before he remembered Keith wouldn’t be able to tell. “Kogane? As in, like Keith Kogane?”

Keith ignored him again. “I have a locket of her hair on me at all times. You know basic communication spells, right? You’re not just an accidental necromancer?”

“I’m not a--”

“Good.” He stood up. “Because it’s time to go.”

With that Lance felt a colossal shove like nothing he’d experienced before, and he blacked out in the folds of the veil.

 

Lance blinked his eyes when he woke before wiggling his fingers and toes, checking to make sure everything still worked. Such an abrupt wake up could have seriously fucked with his corporeal form.

What  _ was _ that? He’d grown relatively accustomed to the somnus dreams at this point and that had never happened to him before, an this time he’d had more power than ever. It felt like someone had forced him to wake up before he was fully ready.

He glanced down at Keith’s sleeping form and did a double take. Holy shit, had  _ he _ done that? The guy was too weak to wake up but he could force someone else awake?

Who the fuck was this guy?

He shook his head, clearing his thoughts. Now wasn’t the time to wonder how the fuck his soulmate had fucking dragged him out of the astral plane and back into the mortal coil. He had an actual, tangible mission now. Things were finally coming together.

Just as Keith had said, there was a plain circular locket strung around his neck emblazoned with a rune Lance didn’t recognize. Just why Keith kept this chick’s hair on him at all times was beyond him, but he’d learned to stop questioning the stranger parts of witchcraft a while ago. Pidge carried weirder shit in their pockets.

And who was she anyway? His mom? Aunt? Sister? Gods, it wouldn’t be that surprising if Shiro had a secret long-lost sister at this point.

Well, whoever she was, she clearly had some dirt on Keith’s situation. Lance felt a twinge of guilt when he reached for Keith’s neck, unfastening the chain with a little difficulty. The clasp was teeny tiny and tangled in the greasy strands of his mullet, which, ugh. Maybe his hair was soft at one point, but it had clearly been a little while since his last sponge-down included a hair wash. 

Still, even under the layers of grime and bed-sweat, Lance could still pick up that strange smell from his somnus when he leaned in: fire without smoke. He wondered if that was a side effect of his particular brand of magic, or if he was just like that. 

Not particularly wanting to get caught huffing a coma patient, he made quick work of the locket. There was definitely some Keith hair stuck in the chain, but he figured the guy wouldn’t mind too much when he woke up. One step closer to a haircut, right?

Once he stood up from the seat that choking death smog was back, thicker than ever, and all Lance wanted was to leave. He gathered up any remnants of his ritual back into his bag and scurried out, barely passing a backwards glance at Keith.

He really, really didn’t want to see him like that again, anyway. It was hard enough the first time. It would be even worse leaving him behind.

 

The coven was irritated to be summoned at such short notice, to say the least.

Shiro was the only one who wasn’t pissed with him. He’d answered the text Lance had sent to the group chat immediately, and was already waiting outside his apartment when he got back.

He’d called the meeting to his apartment to avoid calling any attention to the coven. Their spare classroom was currently occupied by a freshman calc class, and a summoning spell would be a little conspicuous for their usual tree outside. Besides, he had a strong feeling it would be a while before Allura invited him back to her apartment. It had apparently taken her a long time to scrub Lance’s barf out of her skirts. 

Actually, Lance wasn’t sure he wanted to go back to her apartment anytime soon. Any time he thought of it the memory of him embarrassing the hell out of himself sprang to mind, unbidden. 

So much for that date he’d been trying to score.

He unlocked his door and hurried inside, Shiro hot at his heels. “Did he look okay? Like he’d been eating enough and sleeping enough? Was he too thin?”

“Chill, mama bear.” Lance began setting up an altar in the kitchen, shoving the table and chairs to the sidelines. “First of all, he’s in a coma, so, like, I don’t know how to answer any of that. I think he’s fine, though.”

The door to Pidge’s closet cracked open to reveal the gremlin themself, rubbing an eye and frowning deeper than Lance thought possible. “You guys are so fucking loud. And Lance, you aren’t seriously considering doing another summoning spell in our shared communal kitchen, are you? We’re going to have to paint over that scorch residue.”

At least they hadn’t gone to class, though Lance hoped it wasn’t because they were researching the curse still. Then again, he was pretty sure most of their work was online anyway. He avoided asking about coding whenever he could.

“Do you want to try and fit the entire coven in my room, Pidgeotto?” He began tracing out the chalk sigils on the kitchen floor. “Or maybe we could pile into your room?”

They flipped him off before slumping into one of the kitchen chairs, groggily sucking at what looked like a Ziploc bag full of green goo potion like a fucked up Gogurt. Lance wondered absently when they had last slept longer than fifteen minutes. Thank the gods they hadn’t brought their laptop out here to keep working.

Hunk came in next, followed closely in tow by Allura. He looked mildly horrified at the state of his kitchen for a moment, flipping through the five stages of grief quickly enough to give Lance whiplash. He settled into acceptance in the kitchen chair next to Pidge.

Allura meanwhile began looking over Lance’s circle, nodding. “Lance, you’ve gotten very good at your summoning circles. It looks very clean and orderly.”

He flushed in pride and handed her the other piece of chalk to do whatever modifications she saw fit. 

Scratching out a few more symbols within his circle and neatening up his lines, Allura laughed a bit. “I can’t imagine why you’d need to know summoning as well as you do if you want to become a water witch, but it isn’t bad practice.”

She stood and dusted off her skirts. “Now, then, would you like to say the spell, or shall I?”

Lance blushed again and handed her the locket. “It should be you. I don’t want to accidentally kill this girl or something.”

She nodded. “You do have a bit of a reputation, don’t you? Very well.”

She took the hair from the necklace and gathered it in the center of the circle in the small, plain white dish she’d placed there. It looked nearly identical to the pie pan Hunk used for baking, aside from the rune scrawled in sharpie on the bottom. No use in baking pies with the same pan they burned offerings in.

With that she sprinkled a heavy mix of herbs, primarily rosemary, and lit the dish on fire.

It sprang to life quicker than a natural fire, burning quickly through a variety of colors before settling on Allura’s distinctly magical pink. Rather than smelling like burning hair a floral scent began to wash through the apartment. Typical of fae magic.

The fire ebbed and jumped with her vaguely melodic chanting, growing in size to encompass the pie pan and lick at the edges as it tried to wash over the edges. As it did it grew hotter and taller until it was about the size of an adult, and a tall one at that. It looked nearly taller than Shiro, and Lance suddenly became acutely aware of their security deposit. Finally it stagnated, flickering as it held the shape of a woman.

A very  _ cross _ woman.

“Who are you?” She held up two pink-fire hands in a combative stance. “How did you find me?”

Allura continued her chant while pointedly side-eyeing Lance, who got the hint and stepped forward. “Er, sorry, but are you Krolia? Uh, Kogane?”

The fire tried again to step out of the pie pan, clearly frustrated when it couldn’t. “I answer nothing until you do. Why did you use such a small summoning plate?”

The pie plate was looking a little small now that she was standing in it. He hadn’t exactly expected Allura to summon a full-body apparition of this lady in his kitchen, and he certainly hadn’t been expecting her to be this tall. There was no way Keith was this huge.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but we need information about Keith.”

That stilled her. “What do you need with my son?”

Lance shot daggers over at Shiro, who held up his hands placatingly. “Not my mom. Keith’s birth mother.”

Hunk stepped in with his best diplomacy voice. “We’re Keith’s friends, Krolia. We’ve been working on figuring out how to wake him up since we found out what happened, but we need more information on the curse. Keith was able to give us a little information, and he suggested you might know more of the details.”

Damn, that guy was good. Lance half wondered if he’d used his calming honey-voice potion. She stilled again while he spoke, and Lance was tempted to cheer for his friend. 

“You were able to contact Keith?” Her voice came out with the same steel as before, though Lance thought he could just barely pick up a wobble. Maybe it was because he’d been spending so much time with Keith.

Lance waved a hand awkwardly. “Hi, yeah, that was me. It’s kind of a long, awkward story but we’re sort of soulbound? Not permanently, or anything, but it helps with, like, talking through psychic dreams.”

Her pink fire eyes burned straight through his own. “You’re bound to my son? So he’s still alive, then?”

“Kind of?” He really didn’t want to get into the whole story right now. It was awful, yeah, to keep these things from Keith’s clearly concerned mom, but they were short on time. “We can explain all of this soon, but for now we really need to know the details of the curse.”

She folded her arms over her chest. “What do you need?”

Gods, Lance could kiss Hunk right now. “The name of who cursed him would be wonderful, honestly, and if you know what the curse is? Or what it even vaguely seemed like while it was cast? Also if you have any ideas on how to break it we’re all ears.”

Even as a burning column of flame, her eyes were cold. Lance could hardly believe that warm, mulleted dumbass was related to her. Then again, Keith’s penchant for dry remarks was clearly familiar in her.

“If I knew what the curse was, boy, I would have broken it already myself.” Lance fought the urge to shrink back under her icy tone. “It was cast by the witch Haggar herself. The curse was in a Galran dialect and clearly had the intention to kill outright. Is that enough information for you?”

Lance was too freaked to say anything, grateful when Pidge stepped in. “That should do it. Thanks, Krolia.” They slid out of the chair and retreated back into their room, shutting the door loudly.

Krolia nodded. “Very well. Don’t contact me again.”

On that the fire sputtered out and died, leaving behind a pile of ashes and yet another sigil burned into their ceiling. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We are SO CLOSE to the end. next chapter should be the last, though i didn't get everything i planned for this chapter in so who knows?  
> @toastyzuko on tumblr for me, @taytei for the og au
> 
> Trigger Warnings:  
> -Death Mentions  
> -Coma/Brain Death Mentions  
> -General Witchcraft  
> -Actually Useful Hunk


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